Recently, smartphone text messaging autocorrecting has lead to a number of charity donations aimed at funding Cancer research going towards adopting a polar bear.

A craze known as the #nomakeupselfie has been promoting donations to the
Cancer Research UK charity, where people are encouraged to make a donation by
SMS, sending BEAT to the shortcode, 70099.

However, autocorrecting in some handsets replaced BEAT with BEAR, and an
unrelated charity started receiving the expected donations.

Where a donor expected a message thanking them for helping to fight cancer,
instead they got a message thanking them for adopting a polar bear.

The WWF told the BBC that none of the mistaken donations would be processed
as they still handle the matter manually, so would not take the money from the
customer.

Another charity also benefited by mistake as people were told to type DONATE
instead of BEAT, which sent their donations to Unicef instead. Unicef has said
that the nearly £20,000 worth of mistaken donations is being passed to the
cancer charity.

People using the correct code though have donated around £2 million for
cancer research.

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